Woynaroski Lab: Biobehavioral Approaches in NeuroDevelopment (BAND)
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Meet The Team
Lab Director
Tiffany Woynaroski, PhD, CCC-SLP
Assistant Professor in Hearing and Speech Sciences
BS, Psychology, Valparaiso University (2002)
MS, Speech-Language Pathology, Vanderbilt University (2009)
PhD, Hearing and Speech Science, Vanderbilt University (2014)
Tiffany received her PhD from Vanderbilt University’s Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences in December 2014 after an extensive clinical career working with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) as an early interventionist/parent educator, speech language pathologist, and autism consultant. She has authored 55 published or in-press peer-reviewed articles, 2 book chapters, and over 110 presentations at academic conferences.
Research Staff
Bahar Keçeli-Kaysili, PhD
Clinical/Translational Research Coordinator
After two years of extensive experience as a special educator working with young children on the autism spectrum as well as other developmental conditions and their families, Bahar pursued an academic career. She received her Ph.D. in Special Education from Ankara University, Turkey in 2012 and then went on to complete her postdoctoral research fellowship at Vanderbilt University. Her graduate work in special education aimed to understand the relationship of theory of mind and language in children with autism spectrum disorders. Her postdoctoral study focused on the foundations of spoken language acquisition and early communication, and language interventions. Her goal as a researcher is to identify (a) the relationship of theory of mind (ToM) and language in autistic children, (b) early predictors of language outcomes and the mechanisms by which these predictors promote communication and language in autistic children, (c) sensory responsiveness and its relation to later language skills.
She has been an author on 18 peer-reviewed publications and 36 conference presentations.
Jacob Feldman, PhD, CCC-SLP
Research Fellow
Jacob is a research fellow in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences. He completed his bachelors in Communication Sciences and Disorders and Psychology at the Pennsylvania State University, his masters in Speech-Language Pathology at Vanderbilt University, and his PhD in Hearing and Speech Sciences at Vanderbilt University.
He is interested in early identification of autism spectrum disorder and how audiovisual multisensory integration may explain variance in core autism symptoms and higher level factors, such as language and literacy. He has been an author on 16 peer-reviewed publications, 1 clinical tool, and 64 conference presentations.
Doctoral Students
Kacie Dunham, BA
Graduate Research Assistant, Neuroscience
Kacie is a PhD candidate in the Neuroscience Graduate Program and Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at Vanderbilt University. She graduated with a bachelors in Neuroscience with a minor in Music from Vanderbilt University in 2018.
Kacie’s research interests include early identification of autism, sensory processing, particularly multisensory integration, and early language development. She is additionally interested in applying neuroimaging and eye tracking to her broad research interests. Her current research focuses on neural correlates of speech processing and links with language ability in infancy. She has been an author on 9 peer-reviewed publications and 22 conference presentations.
Jennifer Markfeld, MS, CF-SLP
Graduate Research Assistant, Hearing and Speech Sciences
Jennifer is a second year PhD student in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences. She completed her bachelors in Communication Sciences and Disorders from James Madison University and her masters in Speech-Language Pathology at Vanderbilt University.
Jennifer’s research interests include caregiver-infant interaction, infant language development, and interventions designed to address risk factors that contribute to ASD and other neurodevelopmental disorders.
Grace Pulliam, BS
Graduate Research Assistant, Neuroscience
Grace is a first year PhD student in the Neuroscience Graduate Program. She graduated from Vanderbilt in 2022 with a bachelors in Neuroscience, MHS, and Communication of Science and Tech.
Grace’s research interests include relations between audiovisual multisensory integration and ASD symptomatology. She is also interested in investigating links between preference for audiovisual temporal synchrony and early education outcomes.
Zachary Williams, BS
Graduate Research Assistant, Medical Scientist Training Program
Zack Williams is an MD/PhD candidate in the Neuroscience Graduate Program and Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at Vanderbilt University. He is also an affiliate of the Vanderbilt University Frist Center for Autism and Innovation. He received his bachelors in Psychology from Yale University, where he was heavily involved in autism research at the Yale Child Study Center.
Zack's research focuses on the phenomenon of decreased sound tolerance (including hyperacusis, misophonia, and phonophobia) in autistic and non-autistic adults, which he hopes to better understand using a combination of self-report questionnaires, psychoacoustic tasks, and electrophysiologic measures. Additional areas of interest include the assessment and treatment of co-occurring mental health problems and psychosomatic symptoms in autistic adults and the development of novel questionnaires to assess core and associated features of the autism phenotype. You can follow him on Twitter at @QuantPsychiatry and read more about his work here.
Undergraduate Students
Drina Agojci
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Drina is a sophomore majoring in Medicine, Health, and Society with a double minor in Economics and Business in the college of Arts and Science Honors program. Her research interests include studying early language development and interventions designed to improve language acquisition for autistic children and children with other neurodevelopmental conditions.
Madison Clark
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Madison is a senior double majoring in Neuroscience and Medicine, Health, and Society on the pre-med track. Her research interests include language and communication development and multisensory integration in infant siblings of autistic children. Her upcoming senior honors thesis in neuroscience will investigate relations between early preference for temporal synchrony in audiovisual speech and later language development in infant siblings. She is also working on a project in Hawaii that aims to garner greater inclusion of Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders in autism research, in which these groups have been historically underrepresented.
Ellie Pazol
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Ellie is a junior majoring in Medicine, Health and Society and minoring in Special Education. Her research interests include decreased sound tolerance in autistic and non-autistic adults, co-occuring mental health challenges for autistic adults, and access to autism diagnoses and services for neurodivergent youth.
Ava Schwartz
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Ava is a junior majoring in Neuroscience and Medicine, Health, & Society in the college of Arts and Science Honors Program. Her research interests include studying the neuroanatomical links between anxiety disorders and autism.